[kasey_junk]

The US has perhaps the most battle hardened military in the history of the world. It’s had real combat deployments continually for going on 25 years.

At best you can suggest it would be too allocated to counter insurgency but combined arms battles is the heart of American doctrine and its shown its value in Ukraine not its weakness.

I think there are real questions about US military composition, particularly its navy, but battle experience is not a problem.

[ryandrake]

The US military might be battle-hardened and ready for war, but the US public is not. The public is soft and fragile and totally unready for the sacrifices and losses that come from a serious war where we're not an overwhelming force against a tiny Middle Eastern country. The public will not work together collectively to get through a war. We're not going to put up with rationing programs, collecting scrap metal, Victory Gardens, buying war bonds, and take a detour from our careers to work in factories producing ammunition. Hell, half the public couldn't even deal with stay-at-home during COVID and went out protesting when they couldn't eat at the Olive Garden and buy their khakis for a few weeks. Ain't no way we have the intestinal fortitude to put up with a sustained hot war.

[philistine]

There is no military in the world without nuclear weapons that can put enough of a fight to require the US public to collect scrap metal. If the US goes to war with a nation with nuclear weapons, what's left of the whole planet's gonna be collecting scrap metal for the next 200 years.

[relaxing]

We acted quickly post-9/11, buying duct tape and trash bags and taking off our belts at the airport.

You may be surprised how the public can be united against a human enemy. The success of the Right during COVID was turning the outrage away from the invisible virus and onto the humans forcing them to wear a mask.

[ryandrake]

I'll believe it when I see it, hopefuly we never have to. 9/11 was almost 25 years ago--an entire generation. A lot has changed since then. Today, the public is softer, fatter, less healthy, less sane, lonelier, more individualistic and isolated from each other, more addicted to drugs, more addicted to phones, chronically online, narcissistic, and self-obsessed than they were in 2001. And when it comes to playing well with other people they are less tolerant, angrier, more belligerent, less capable of cooperating, defiant against even minor sacrifices that might help others... We have this "in it for ourselves" religion that wasn't as strong in 2001. I don't think even a land invasion by a foreign aggressor could unify us anymore.

[gloosx]

You assume that continuous combat deployments automatically translate to full-scale war readiness, but there's a big difference between counterinsurgency operations and peer-to-peer warfare.

The US military has been engaged in conflicts for decades, but most of them involved fighting non-state actors or weaker conventional forces, not a high-intensity war against an advanced military.

[no_wizard]

Advanced is doing some heavy lifting.

The US military is far a cut above everything else, in terms of tactical readiness, sheer firepower and especially effective size.

We outspend any other nation - China included of which we spend an estimated 2.5 times more than - and we have been in that lead position for decades, not just years.

While yes, US forces haven’t squared off against conventional militaries of any note in some time, the US military has at least been engaged in real conflict. To my recollection the Chinese military have undertaken no significant military campaigns in the last 20+ years and lack the air & sea power to functionally match anything the US military can throw at it by comparison.

Which leaves ground forces, which is both vulnerable to air power and is effectively the numbers game the Chinese can win outright in a protracted war that escalated to that level, and cyber warfare, which the Chinese have proven to be quite adept at but the US military has been aware and developing counter measures against that for a long time as well

This talking conventionally of course.

China being a nuclear power means it would be unlikely to escalate past a certain point if anyone is acting rationally. There’s no reason you want to give another nuclear power a reason to use those weapons, and certainly the US nuclear arsenal is not one anyone wants to see fired either.

So in all likelihood this continues as a Cold War

[ffsm8]

I agree with the spirit of your statement, I truly believe that the US military is the by far most advanced and well equipped force on earth.

Nonetheless, I feel the need to point out that it's budget is a terrible indicator for that.

I'm not even american and have heard just how massively overcharged everything is that's sold to the US military.

It's entirely possible that i.e. China, that can produce their military equipment could actually be way better equipped then it's budget implies. I don't think that Chinas military has caught up to the US yet, but the military spending feels like a bad comparison considering how differently they're financed.

[no_wizard]

As the comment from phillistine notes this doesn’t square with known data and I have no evidence to the contrary.

To which I want to add, that even though the DoD modes have its own (and worth addressing) budget process issues they’re at least largely getting what they are paying for in most circumstances as well as continuing to fund R&D at a fairly robust clip.

In the area of defense R&D in particular that large gap in budgetary spending will matter a lot more than building any “well known” military equipment as the next generation will come online faster than other nations can keep up without ramping their own spending

[philistine]

Doesn't square with any sort of real data we have. The West have better, and more, of everything. For crissakes, the Germans have artillery that fires while driving full speed with the same precision as any other nation's artillery.

[gloosx]

>China being a nuclear power means it would be unlikely to escalate past a certain point if anyone is acting rationally.

Well, Russia is a nuclear power, and not everyone is acting rationally. Russia got part of it's own territory occupied now, and some important oil and gas facilities are literally being bombed, not talking about regular cities and homes.

Russian nuclear doctrine is: Russia could launch nuclear weapons in response to an attack on its territory by a non-nuclear-armed state.

Their warheads are still at bay, why is that? I don't believe they will ever fly, because no-one is stupid enough to make the first move, and the war can go on neglecting them.

[kasey_junk]

Russia has proven it’s not a peer is the issue.

Prior to invading Ukraine one might have thought so, but the experience there shows the challenge in thinking that.

Meanwhile the last time the US military deployed to a traditional battlefield the opponent army lasted a matter of months.

Lord willing we’ll never know about these hypotheticals.